I don’t know if that’s meaningfully true. When a candidate lies and the information distribution industries are by and large just repeating the lies, on top of decades of voter suppression measures, can we say that the popular vote really represents what people want? I don’t think so. So yeah one candidate will win by a razor-thin margin but I don’t think that actually gives legitimacy to what is happening.
True the vast majority of the time. This ad though doesn’t promote anything malicious. It’s a cute story with the message “eat healthy stuff like vegetables and fish”, with a brand name/ logo at the very end.
And as a (very occasional) customer, I like that this company is signalling that it does not oppose inclusion and doesn't mind questioning "traditional values" (the wolf eating animals).
Many actors these days (both companies and political figures) are very much signalling the contrary, so some kind of signalling is absolutely useful.
"You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
> A vast majority of people aren’t happy about what’s going on.
What makes you say that? Granted, I'm just an outside observer trying to see what's going on, but since the majority isn't protesting as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem like the majority doesn't care too much currently. Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
> Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
What is your mental model of the median American citizen?
> The nation’s affordability crisis has not spared middle-class families, one-third of which struggle to afford basic necessities such as food, housing, and child care.
> Across the 160 U.S. metro areas studied, at least 20% of middle-class earners cannot afford to live in that place, after adjusting for local income ranges and price variations.
When you don't know how to afford food for the week or pay the next rent, you're hardly interested in going out on the street and protest. Been there and done that, and politics, no matter how aggressive or "against you" it can feel, is really the last thing on your mind in those situations.
> Boiled down and greatly simplified; someone who struggles to afford food, housing, and child care.
This is not a good description of the median American. Your article is about the income required to afford a "comfortable life," which is a vague target. You can get a concrete idea of what this target seems to mean by looking at the calculator they use: https://www.epi.org/resources/budget/.
For a 2 adult/2 child household in the Baltimore metro area, the calculator estimates you need a household income of $126,000 to meet this "comfortable life" benchmark. For a single person with no kids, the standard is $54,000 a year. It does not make sense to say that someone making $50,000 a year or a family making $100,000 a year in Baltimore (which is a cheap area) is "struggling." My sister-in-law's friend, a 20-something who works as a nanny, probably makes less than that and she has time and money to go out, travel, etc.
The basic error in this analysis is that it bakes in a number of assumptions about standard of living. It assumes that people with significantly below-median incomes (it defines middle class as the middle 60%, so someone at the 25th percentile is counted as middle class) can live alone in a median house, etc., send their kids to corporate daycares, etc. But people with below-median incomes live in below-median houses, they have roommates, they rely on family for childcare, etc. My sister-in-law's friend has roommates, which frees up a lot of money to go do stuff.
If you applied this standard to Europe, you would probably conclude that people are quite desperate there, though of course they are not. In Spain and Italy, half of adults 25-34 live with their parents. They probably couldn't afford to live by themselves in a median-priced apartment. But does that mean they're struggling and would have no time to protest?
So they aren't happy with what's going on, no? They just don't have the means to do anything meaningful about it until the next election cycle. Hopefully the one thing this administration has done is decreased voter apathy.
> Probably most people are in a dire enough situation that they cannot afford to protest, and are busy enough trying to figure out how to re-organize their living situation.
A lot of it's that. Our GDP is inflated by bullshit like over-paying for healthcare to the tune of double-digit percentages of total GDP, among other things, so we're flat-out not as rich as we look on paper, as a country. Our social safety net is really bad, government retirement systems and disability are sub-par by OECD standards, and we may have as few as zero paid vacation days or ability to refuse a shift (without being fired for it).
Anyone under the top 20% or so in the US is struggling, or at least stressed out by knowing that one bad month can mess them up for years and years and ruin any long-term plans they had.
We're also a lot more spread out than most countries. It's a lot more expensive and time-consuming to go protest in DC when you live in, say, Colorado, than it is for someone in Marseilles to go attend a protest in Paris. So they go to some local protest with 50 people instead, or maybe to one in Denver with a couple thousand, and you never hear about it. And the protests don't get rowdy (they might get teargassed anyway, of course) because see above about the "one bad month" thing—an arrest without charges of a working adult can easily end up making their family homeless, because they lose their job and can't get another one fast enough (and it's much, much worse if even very low-level charges are filed, even if the charges don't stick or are dropped—our legal system is great at eating thousands of dollars for what ends up being nothing, besides further schedule disruption bringing further risk to employment)
> A vast majority of people aren’t happy about what’s going on.
Because Trump hasn't gotten prices to pre-Biden levels like he promised, not because of what he's doing at the border. Trump has a 49% approval rating on immigration, 50% on "returning America to its values," and 51% on "fighting crime in America's cities." https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP... (page 9).
51% of the country, including 32% of democrats, support "us[ing] the National Guard and active-duty military to police American cities and stop crime and disorder." (Page 23)
Let’s assume it’s simulations all the way down and we exist in plane P=n. The question is are we at n=0.
Looks like this result says we can’t simulate our plane in a computer. But the stuff in that simulation exists in P=n+1. So maybe the conclusion is “you can’t simulate n from within n+1” which means we can’t simulate our own plane, let alone our potential parent, and doesn’t mean we don’t have one
Maybe but it happens in many many other contexts. Especially apps - right now for example in Hipcamp I cannot copy the detailed instructions for my trip. In Airbnb I can copy the entire “house rules” doc but not just an arbitrary paragraph or sentence.
It’s just a tool, a weapon im their arsenal. They are still pushing the free speech narrative in other places, eg. Europe, when people try to stop candidates and pundits from lying. But then obviously once they succeed lying their way into power that tool isn’t necessary anymore, and controlling speech becomes important.
You're talking about long highway trips? Parent is probably talking local trips, where 200+ mph is never going to be safe, and would not even be useful.
Paraphrasing: “I like actual dictator wannabe A and actual dictator wannabe B and I’m glad they’re working together to punish people who are trying to fighting them”
The real dictators are these unelected judges. I've had actual lawyers tell me "judges = gods" to my face. It's just how things are in this shithole. Attempts to protest them resulted in thousands of arrests and 15+ years of imprisonment. People routinely get less jail time for cold blooded murder. And they're the supreme court so there's no possible recourse against them.
So I'm glad some foreign power outside their jurisdiction is doing something about it regardless of their reasons.
A few years ago the solution to that would have been a van, which apparently are more practical and roomy than suvs. But they are not cool, so people don’t buy them anymore. (Not saying I know why you specifically made this particular decision, talking about the general trend)
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